Books like What's Left of the Night — picked by fans

I was immediately hooked by this brilliant novel because of its unusual omniscient narrator, the Grim Reaper. Death, stressed out by the surfeit of “clients” he must deal with during World War II, reveals himself to be a sensitive narrator who sees everything. He especially keeps his eye on a young German girl, her loving foster parents, and the Jewish man they hide and protect.

I fell in love with these characters as they struggled with moral decisions, wartime hardship, danger, and tragedy. Despite the realistic portrayal of German life during WWII, I found this book to be an uplifting read. 

Self-realization and the duality of human nature are the dominant themes of this coming-of-age story. Emil Sinclair, the narrator, and protagonist of the book, struggles between light and dark, good and bad, and Damian, Sinclair’s mysterious classmate, and friend, helps Sinclair reach eventual self-awareness. Damien is a fascinating psychological analysis of a vulnerable youthful soul in search of its own true identity and that’s why it’s perfect for young adults and/or individuals who aim to discover their own unique path in life. As an addict of such themes, I read this book in college and still re-read it (now and then) when in self-doubt.

If you were to read one of Kundera’s novels, let it be this, Immortality! It’s the last of a trilogy (that includes The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness Of Being), and Kundera’s masterful attempt to answer questions such as: What’s the meaning of life? And is immortality so unbearable as our brief existence?

Its plot is Kunderian, light, and poetical. The story initiates from a simple gesture by Agnes, one of the protagonists, but as it progresses the reader begins to feel the heaviness of mortality and the endless challenges of love. It’s a beautiful discussion on the nature of one’s legacy, and how one changes (or not) through the passage of time, and unfortunately can’t do much about it.

This is the Tom Robbins book for me: the glorious bastard that made me want to be a writer.

It's a day lost in Tijuana, or Nice, or Beijing, or some other place you'd never thought you'd be, and you don't speak the language, but you've convinced yourself that you're fluent, and you can do it: you can get around anyway, and there's no cabs, and so you get into some guy's really old Volvo or, more ill-advised, van, and you give him the local equivalent of ten bucks to take you where you hope you want to be and not kill you, and he does it, but when he drops you off he yells at you, in his language, for being stupid enough to take a ride with a stranger.

And you do it again the next day, and you never learn your lesson.

The book is dedicated to his three students from Princeton’s translation workshop, “Madeleine, Nadia, and Susan, and their faith in the art of translation.” And yes, that last is me. This dedication has not biased my love for these poems even though I recognize his tutelage in their lines: he taught us to be bold, true and simple, as in Ritsos’s famous poem, “The Meaning of Simplicity,” which begins, “I hide behind simple things, so you’ll find me...” which is placed smack in the middle of this volume.

Many of these poems are short but not simple, as in simplistic. Their references to ancient myths give us another chance to relive the meaning of those myths through the senses; as Ritsos said in one of his interviews, “Human beings develop through their senses, not through their brains.”

This is, of course, considered to be one of the great books, but I have noticed that not a lot of people I know have actually read it.

I was apprehensive that it might be a bit slow, but I was surprised, in fact, thrilled to find it a great read, an amazing journey through the internal life of both the narrator (recalling events from his childhood) and of Swann and Odette.

The descriptions of both place and of emotion are exceptional, and Proust’s rendering of the characters’ psychological and emotional states, how we perceive their meaning, and how it affects their lives is phenomenal.

The book feels fresh, inventive, and modern, and although it is the first volume of seven, it easily stands alone. 

This is the best history of the Dreyfus Affair and I wish it were available in English. Whereas most histories of the Affair cast Dreyfus as a hapless victim or as a patriotic automaton, who might not have even been a Dreyfusard had he not been Dreyfus, Duclert shows him to have been a true hero, whose super-human resolve and fortitude eventually allowed justice to prevail. Dreyfus emerges not as a martyr to antisemitism but as the first example of the resistance hero, the model for the struggle against authoritarianism and state terror in the twentieth century.

What’s not to love about a book set in Paris about a journalist who falls in love with a Frenchman? This book is a delight. Turnbull writes beautifully, and with modesty and humour about making every faux pas imaginable in Paris. It’s light and insightful at the time. The pages practically turned themselves.

I love weaving history into my mysteries so I was drawn to this dark tale of Paris in the Belle Époque. An English girl goes to Paris to study art but, desperately poor, throws her fate into the hands of some shady characters. The atmosphere and scene-setting of Paris during a terrible rainy winter are unforgettable. 

This is an intimate, first-person account of 1920’s Paris, and the life of one of the most central characters of the period—the model, singer, and artist, Kiki of Montparnasse as she was known by all. Born in Burgundy in 1901, christened Alice Prin, and raised by her grandmother in abject poverty, at age twelve she was shipped off to Paris to live with the mother she had never known.

The young Alice’s fierce survival instincts immediately translated into a precocious thirst for experience. At fourteen she had her “first contact with art” when she began posing nude for a sculptor. Thereafter, she assumed the name and embraced life as the irrepressible Kiki. Lover of Man Ray, beloved friend of Soutine, Jean Cocteau, and many other artists of the period, she became the toast of Montparnasse, one of the century’s first truly independent women. Man Ray, Foujita, Kisling, and others immortalized… show more.